Agony. Pure, merciless agony.
A searing wave of torment ripped through Noah's body, burning through every nerve like wildfire. His consciousness flickered, his mind drowning in a sea of unbearable pain. His body, fragile and broken, surrendered to the only escape it had—oblivion.
Darkness enveloped him, but it wasn't empty. Slowly, warmth seeped through the void, melting away the icy numbness that had imprisoned him. A soft touch grazed his face, tender and familiar.
His eyelids, leaden with exhaustion, struggled to part. Through the hazy fog of his vision, a faint glow emerged.
His breath hitched.
Judy.
His daughter stood before him, her small frame illuminated by an ethereal light. Her rosy cheeks glowed with life, her wide, innocent eyes piercing through his soul. A smile—pure, untouched by sorrow—graced her lips. She radiated warmth, love, everything he thought had been stolen from him forever.
"Am I… dead?" Noah's voice was weak, barely a whisper against the crushing silence.
Judy didn't answer. Instead, she stepped forward and wrapped her tiny arms around him. The embrace was soft, warm, devastating. It filled the hollow void within him, mending cracks in his heart he had long since given up on healing. A sob choked his throat as he held her, desperate, terrified she would slip away.
"Not yet, Daddy," she finally whispered. "Not yet."
Noah's mind reeled. He didn't understand. He didn't need to. Whether this was a dream, an illusion, or something beyond his comprehension, none of it mattered. He had her again, if only for a fleeting moment.
"You still have so much to do," she said, her voice steady, unwavering. "So many heights to reach. You'll understand at the end. But don't worry—I'll always be waiting for you."
Noah opened his mouth to speak, to beg her to stay, but before he could, the warmth began to slip away. The void around him trembled. A sickening weightlessness overtook him as the ground beneath his feet crumbled. He reached for her—desperate, pleading—but she was already fading into the abyss.
"JUDY!!" His scream tore through the emptiness.
And then—
He fell.
The impact slammed through his body, rattling his bones. Noah's eyes snapped open, his breath ragged and shallow. The cold, unrelenting ground pressed against his back, its harsh chill cutting through the fading haze of his mind. Every inch of him ached, the remnants of pain still lingering like ghostly embers.
Slowly, he sat up, his body trembling from exhaustion. His gaze drifted to the mouth of the cave, where an endless desert stretched beneath the merciless glare of twin suns. The barren landscape radiated an oppressive silence, a world utterly devoid of life.
Tears burned his eyes as he whispered, "It was… just a dream." The warmth of her presence was already slipping away, dissolving into the cruel reality that now surrounded him.
But reality had no patience for grief.
A sudden, searing pain ignited in his chest. Noah gasped, his fingers instinctively flying to the source of the fire consuming him from within. His touch met something alien. Something wrong.
His chest wasn't his anymore.
Ragnarok. The machine.
It had fused with his flesh, its intricate mechanisms pulsing faintly with an eerie, shimmering blue light. The once-separate device had become one with him, its wires burrowing into his body like living veins, like roots in fertile soil.
"What… what is this?" His voice trembled, raw with horror.
A wave of nausea rolled through him. Panic clawed at his throat as he frantically grasped at the foreign entity, trying to tear it from his body. But it wouldn't budge. It was part of him now. The more he struggled, the deeper the agony bit into his nerves.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to rip it out. Wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
But there was no waking up. This was real.
Breathe. Think. Focus.
He forced himself to calm down, dragging his scattered thoughts into some semblance of order. "The earthquake… the ground splitting open… it was all Ragnarok. It wasn't random—it was this."
His trembling fingers brushed the glowing core embedded in his chest. A rhythmic hum vibrated through him, steady, controlled. The realization hit like a thunderclap.
The machine had worked.
Somehow, impossibly, it had activated. But at what cost?
"I need to understand this," he muttered. "Figure out what went wrong."
He retraced his steps, forcing himself to recall the last moments before everything shattered. "I was in the basement lab… the energy condensation… nothing was working. I was at a dead end."
His mind flashed back.
Rage. Frustration. Desperation.
"I slammed the machine to the ground. My hand… it got cut. The blood seeped into it…"
His breath caught. A realization so absurd, so impossible, took hold of him.
"Did my blood activate the machine?"
The thought made his skin crawl. He shook his head violently. "No. No, that's insane. This is science—solid, provable science. Not… witchcraft. Not—"
His voice faltered.
Not something beyond science.
A fresh wave of unease settled over him, thick as suffocating air. He needed to distract himself. He needed to understand where the hell he was.
Steeling himself, he staggered to the cave's entrance. His breath hitched at the sight before him.
An alien world stretched out in every direction. A vast ocean of golden sand, broken by jagged red mountains that clawed toward the sky. No villages. No roads. No signs of civilization. Just an endless, merciless emptiness.
He stepped forward.
The moment his foot touched the sand, an unbearable heat surged through him. A blistering force, like the breath of a god, slammed against his skin. The twin suns' unrelenting glare scorched him instantly, searing his flesh like an open flame.
With a strangled cry, he staggered backward, collapsing onto the cool stone of the cave. He clutched his arms, his skin raw and blistered. The pain was excruciating. If he had stayed out a second longer…
"Damnation!" His voice, hoarse with pain and fury, echoed through the cavern. "What kind of hell is this?"
He stared at his trembling hands, at the burned flesh peeling from his fingers. The reality of his situation bore down on him like a crushing weight. He was trapped. Trapped in a world he didn't understand, bound to a machine he never meant to become a part of.
His shadow stretched across the ground, faint and flickering in the dim cave light. He glared at it, his frustration bubbling into something irrational, something desperate.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" he growled. "Go on. Laugh at me. That's all you're good for."
Silence answered him. A silence far more terrifying than mockery.
He exhaled, forcing himself to steady his mind. He couldn't afford to break. Not yet.
"Think, Noah. Observe. Analyze. Survive."
Exhaustion weighed on him like lead. His body had reached its limit. Slumping against the cave wall, he let his eyes slip shut.
First, rest.Then, answers.
And after that?
Survival.